It is early evening on the taxi rank, and I do not think that I will stay here for very much longer.
I have had enough.
I know that I have had enough, because I do not want to smile at people any more. People are coming over to the taxi rank and instead of welcoming them with good cheer, I am sighing heavily and reluctantly looking up at them over my glasses.
It is time for an early night. We did not feel very well when the alarm went off this morning, and we were heavy-limbed and taciturn over coffee.
It is still hot and monumentally busy in Windermere. Tempers are getting frayed, the man on the garage came out and bawled at me when I dropped some passengers off on his forecourt, and a lady backed her car into the front of my taxi on the station.
I ignored the former, loftily, and did not mind the latter, because it really is not worth spoiling somebody’s day for the sake of a few more scrapes on a clapped-out taxi. I got out and had a look, but on the whole they blended in so well with the general ambiance of my taxi that they did not seem very important.
It will be good to have an early night, because we are going to have a day off tomorrow. Mostly we are going to spend this not doing things. Mark is not going to install rural broadband, and I am not going to drive a taxi. Instead, we are going to spend the day with the children.
We considered going to Blackpool, but if Blackpool is even half as busy as Windermere it will not be worth it. Nobody wants to spend a day off driving round and round in circles desperate to find somewhere to park, most especially not in an overheating camper van on a very hot day.
I am very glad that today has been a hot day, because I have had a lot of washing to get dried.
I thought this morning that I would wash our dressing gowns, because they are thick, and take ages to dry, and so it is a job saved for the warmest and breeziest sunny days.
They were pegged heavily on the line, and I was halfway through the second load of washing when Lucy came downstairs with the joyful news that Roger Poopy had unhelpfully been sick in her bed.
I do not have the words to explain how very unpopular this made him. I think he might have been expecting this, because as soon as I headed up the stairs to her room, he shot off in the opposite direction and hid under the table, at the back in the dark, whilst I tried to work out ways of making my displeasure plain without actually being prosecuted by the RSPCA.
In the end I lifted up the table cloth and bellowed at him that he was a clearance poopy and that he had no friends any more. This made him so upset that I felt guilty, although the revolting mess on Lucy’s duvet soon fixed that.
I had so much washing that it is all still on the line even now, although it is evening.
I am now at home.
I gave up there. I took some people to the car park next to the Library Gardens and the temptation was just too much. Mark was on his way home anyway.
I turned left instead of right at the end of the road and a couple of minutes’ later I was at home.
We are all at home. I have come upstairs to the office to write to you, and downstairs I can hear a very great deal of the sort of animated discussion that happens after the first gin cocktail whilst three people are trying to get dinner ready and choose a film in a co-operative sort of manner.
I am listening to them chirping away, and suddenly feeling very happy. I like being at home very much, especially with roast lamb and gin cocktails.
I am going to go away and enjoy it.
Have a picture of the dogs cooling themselves this morning.
